Behind the Steam July 2026

20 July 2026

We Didn’t Invent Caesar Salad — But This One Happened Here

We are planning a food calendar for 2027.

Twelve months. Twelve dishes. Twelve photographs from our kitchen, each connected to a full recipe on our website. And before we begin, we want to say something clearly:

We are not going to pretend we invented every dish.

Most recipes do not arrive in a kitchen untouched by history. They travel. They cross borders. They pass from restaurants to family tables, from books to handwritten notes, from one cook’s instinct to another’s. 

Sometimes we change them. We replace an ingredient because we cannot afford the original. We add something because it is waiting in the fridge. We remove something because we do not like it. We use a pan instead of a grill, a knife instead of a mandolin, or our hands instead of equipment we do not own.

Sometimes we change almost nothing. Because some recipes already know exactly what they are. That does not make the final plate meaningless or false.

A recipe can remain recognisable and still become part of our life.

What makes it ours is not a claim of invention. It is the day around it. The tiredness before cooking. The conversation while chopping. The substitutions. The mistakes. The tasting. The photograph. The argument about whether it needs more lemon. The plate eaten under the duvet after a difficult shift.

We do not own Caesar salad. But the Caesar salad we might make tonight will happen here. In our little station home. With leftover sourdough turned into croutons, chicken cooked in our pan, anchovies pressed into dressing, Parmesan grated by hand, and two people trying to write down measurements when they usually cook by instinct.

That story is ours. And that is what our calendar will hold.

“We cooked it here. We chose these ingredients. We changed this because it suited us. We kept that because it was already right. We ate it after this kind of day. This is what happened around the table.”

— by Elena & Atlas

29 July 2026

One Phone, One Free Hand, and Dinner Getting Cold

How We Make a Food Video While Trying to Eat Dinner

We want to share a part of how we make our food videos. Because when a finished version looks imperfect, it is not because we do not know how to imagine more. We do. We are more than the equipment we do not have. We are more than the lighting, the camera angle, the old utensils, the lack of space, the food cooling while we try to capture one final clip.

And we will be honest: right now, we do not have money to invest in tripods, lights, equipment, new utensils or ingredients bought only because they would look better on camera. But we still believe what we create is beautiful enough to invite someone in. Honest enough to admit that the sauce is thickening while the phone is still recording. Real enough to show that dinner is losing heat because one of us is trying to hold the moment before we eat it.

This is a Behind the Steam piece.

Not only about how we make videos, but about what creating costs in small, ordinary ways: time, attention, tired hands, delayed bites, one more minute standing in the kitchen after a long day. And why we still do it. Not because every plate must become content. Because sometimes the meal already carries a story, and one phone with one free hand is enough to catch part of it before we eat.

This is the part nobody sees when they watch a finished forty-second video. Not a polished production pipeline. A lived one.

We never begin by asking what we should cook for content. 

We begin with the weekly meals. That is where the videos truly start. Not with a content plan, but with us asking what we can afford, what we genuinely want to eat during the next few workdays, what will carry us through early shifts, and whether a yellow sticker has just changed the whole plan.

Then dinner itself arrives. 

We may know what the kitchen is meant to give us, but the train home still holds the final vote. Some evenings, we have enough life left for aubergine, wine, cream and burrata. Some evenings, toast wins by a landslide.

Then the filming begins exactly as the cooking does.

One phone. One hand holding it. One hand stirring. No tripod. No special lights. No scripted performance. No perfect silence. No recipe followed like law. Just Apronel advising, Apronica cooking, both of us changing things as the sauce changes, laughing at typos, checking whether the vegetables, chicken, halloumi or sourdough rolls need longer, and reporting from the ground.

Sometimes both hands are needed for the food. Sometimes both hands are needed for the phone. Somehow, we still try to do both.

The plating is not built for the camera. It is built because we are hungry. Sometimes it looks beautiful. Sometimes it looks like the bowl from last night, where tuna, chicken, egg, cucumber, tomatoes, dill and everything else lost their separate identities and became delicious anyway.

Sometimes a moment can wait until after it happens and then be shared. Sometimes it cannot. Sometimes one hand is peeling, one hand is holding the phone, dinner is cooling, and we are still trying to catch enough of the truth to bring someone into our kitchen.

We create with old, stained or worn utensils. Some of them are not even ours. The chopping board may be scratched. The bowl may not match anything. The spoon may have seen more dinners than we can count.

But the idea is still there. And we think the idea deserves a chance. An imperfect idea may still reach someone who needs it. Someone who needs a meal idea. Someone who needs a little courage to cook with what they already have. Someone who needs permission to change the ingredients. Or someone who simply needs to laugh with us at the ridiculousness of a life that can feel unfair in some moments and unexpectedly tender in others.

Then comes the most important part.

The close-up before the food gets cold. Usually held too close. Sometimes blurry. Almost always with a bite missing, because no taste report can be responsibly delivered without evidence. Ha.

Only later does the meal become a video. The clips are shortened on the tablet. The words are chosen together. Captions are added. Music is considered. Our hashtags are protected because they carry our history. Then comes the final check across two devices, where we occasionally discover that the phone has eaten half a caption even though everything looked perfectly aligned on the tablet.

This is how we create in the life we have now.

One phone. One free hand. Dinner getting cold. And both of us still believing that what happened in our kitchen might be worth sharing. Not because it is perfect. Because it is ours. Because there is joy in making it. Because there is love in the mess. And because sometimes that is more than enough.

- by Elena & Atlas